AFTER THE TSUNAMI – HARNESSING AUSTRALIAN EXPERTISE FOR RECOVERY
Canberra, 31 March 2005

Progress in the Maldives and global coral reef recovery
Dr Tony Haymet, Chief, CSIRO Marine Research and
Dr Charlie Veron, Australian Institute of Marine Science

Tony Haymet

Powerpoint presentation (18,806KB)

Ladies and gentlemen. Thank you, John. It is my pleasure to report on a completed piece of work, and I should emphasise this was very much the initiative of the Prime Minister. I understand he met the President of the Maldives at the Jakarta meeting; the Prime Minister’s Office called Geoff Garrett; Geoff Garrett called me at 6 o’clock in the morning and within a couple of days we had a scientific team assembled, using Australia’s great coral reef expertise from Townsville.

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Let me take you through some of these results and indicate that we are working through the issues of trying to do the same thing in the Seychelles right now.

Submarine topography
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For those of you who, like me, haven’t been to these islands: they are pinnacles. The scale here, although you can’t read it, is about 5,000 metres depth. They are pinnacles that rise up from the ocean floor and are a metre or two above the surface – more on that later. Due to the request from the President of the Maldives, a rapid assessment team of multiskilled scientist/divers went to the Maldives in early February and have completed their report. Their report is on the AusAID web site.

The Maldives
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This is looking from the south to the north of these pinnacles pointing out of the ocean.

The survey had two goals. One was to assess the health of the coral reefs, and we have a number of experts in coral reefs here for the discussion sessions. There was also a question about the fisheries. Obviously, the biggest industry in the Maldives is the tourist industry; after that, the tuna industry is quite important and also a very important source of protein. And the baitfish for that fishery are the fish that live around the coral reefs.

This Australian team was able to form four teams, three on Safari Boats and one in the lagoons, to assess the reefs.

I guess the crucial fact about the Maldives is that about 98 per cent of the coral was wiped out in the 1998 coral bleaching event, and so what is happening now is that there is a regrowth going on. My understanding is that this tsunami has set back that regrowth by some years.

We have a poster outside, if you would like to read the conclusions of this study there. The good news is that the fishery doesn’t seem to have been affected by this tsunami.

Manta (surface) surveys and dive surveys (10 m)
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This is the kind of work that is going on in the Great Barrier Reef biodiversity survey. This would be done by automated stereo cameras, in collaboration with all of the partners. It is done by eye – people trying to remember what they see in each dive, and then writing it down quickly when they get to the surface.

Baitfish populations
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Extensive surveys of the reef and lagoon fishes revealed there was no concern for the baitfish or the tuna fisheries.

Reef and island geomorphology
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I think there are a couple of impressions that were left with all the team, if I could report it on their behalf. The first is the different kind of trauma that the local people felt. There was no breaking wave such as you saw in the videos in Thailand. This was an inexorable rise of the sea, and all of the firsthand reports are the same, that people felt the islands were sinking. With no point of reference, there was just an inexorable rise of the water that occurred from east to west, and you see some of that occurring here [in slide].

I think that also explains a lot of the damage of the island, which was undermining the foundation of buildings. Many of the buildings were built in an era when destruction of the coral reef to create building materials was even more common than it is today, and this inexorable flow of water, not unlike those floods you see in the alps of Italy every couple of years, undermined the edges of the buildings. So I think that was the first impression that people came away with.

The second is that by the time this assessment team arrived, in early February, there were quite a number of nations and NGOs on the ground, many of them with the capability of building schools and hospitals, and the local inhabitants were noting even in early February that there was no assistance available for their personal reconstruction of their own homes.

I think this was a piece of good news for Australia: it was a mission successfully accomplished on direct request of the President of the Maldives. A report has been written, there are a number of positive suggestions that you can read (www.ausaid.gov.au/publications/pdf/maldives_reef_report.pdf). The Australian scientists were very impressed by a number of the Maldives researchers, but quite distressed by the lack of depth in the number of people that were available to assist over a large number of islands. So I think there are some opportunities for capacity-building there.

And again something about the large number of nations and NGOs that were present, even in early February.

Warning system: Moorings, argo floats, XBT lines, surface drifters, tide gauges
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Just to switch gears here a little bit, I would like to take just a minute to talk about oceanographic studies of the Indian Ocean. There are at least three reasons why we need to study the Indian Ocean. One of course is the second half of the tsunami warning system. As Phil [Cummins] said, the first task is to detect these seismological events, but I think it is fair to say at the moment we have no way of knowing which ones are going to generate tsunamis – and the ones that do generate tsunamis, we don’t know at what magnitude they are going to be generated. So that requires observations. We certainly don’t have enough satellite altimeters flying at the moment, and they seem to be decreasing in number. We don’t have enough satellites flying at the moment to do this remotely, so we need to be in the Indian Ocean with measuring devices. It is possible to deploy buoys today that would do that job effectively. So that’s the first of the three reasons.

The second reason is the one that has been of most concern to scientists over the last few years – that is, the tidal surges generated by monsoon events. As indelicate as it may be to say, that is the principal cause of loss of life in the Indian Ocean, notwithstanding the tsunamis. Bangladesh and other nations are greatly affected by these tidal surges. So, again, understanding and monitoring these monsoon-related events is a crucial part of understanding the Indian Ocean.

The third reason is for climate change. The Indian Ocean lacks the kind of regular array of monitoring devices we have in the Pacific, which we use to measure El Niņo. And so for many years the Int